Not My Usual Cup of Tea....

[Arthur Morris]

At Bosque I am usually striving for 3/4 frame images of single geese in flight or frame filling photos of flocks blasting off at slow shutter speeds.... So this family of four portrait is not my norm.

Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens with the EOS_1D MIV on the Mongoose m/3.6 atop the Gitzo 3530 LS CF tripod. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 stop: 1/1000 sec. at f/7.1.

As I was trying for a group shot I did go for a bit more d-o-f.

Don't be shy; all comments welcome.

[Chris Martinez]

I like the balance of the wingstrokes. I also think the bit of cloud prevents the image from being to sterile. The golden light is always welcome. I personally think the bird on the left is a tiny bit to close to the edge of the frame?

[Michael Bertelsen]

Arthur,

I like this image mostly because you left the strong light on the birds and it balances very nicely with the sun soaked clouds.
I think the background is my favourite part.

Thumbs up,

Michael

[Andrew McLachlan]

Love the golden light on the birds and their placement within the comp.

[Don Nelson]

Artie

In my opinion, eliminating the piece of black cloud below the lowest wingtip would strengthen the image.'

[Bhushan Dalvi]

Artie , I love that golden light on the birds. The alternating wing positions on the birds works very well.

[Nancy Bell]

I very much prefer your other styles. For me there is nothing here to really keep my interest. The geese are too small and the head-on angle does not really capture any detail. I believe it would be more interesting with a fair amount cropped from the top, thereby emphasizing the 4 birds more visually.

[Matthew Studebaker]

I like the composition here, reminds me of a painting

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Matt. Good to see you here :)

Chris, thanks. I like the clouds too. There were some big white clouds and some big dark clouds that afternoon. I am fine with the framing but a bit more on our left would be OK too. I think that I might have cropped a bit there....

Then one big cloud covered the sun and the fun was over :)

Michael and Andrew, Thanks!

Don, You are correct sir. I should move that cloud to the llc. Centered it is a distraction....

Thanks Bhushan. I agree and think that this has a lot going for it. It is hard to pull off these small group images. This one has nice compositional balance, four nice wing positions, and four relatively sharp heads.

[Arthur Morris]

"For Nancy." (Can anyone finish that quote from one of the Harry Chapin Live albums???)

Cropped as suggested and move two clouds. And, found an ugly dust spot.

In any case, variety is the spice of life :) And as I said above, I like this one a lot. But the repost does improve it so thanks all.

Nancy, I will see you in Chile in October 2010. Anyone wanna go to South Georgia and the Falklands? See this afternoon's blog post :)

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Feel like it might benefit from a pano crop keeping the clouds above and below of the geese in the right frame of the image... Like the color palette in the image. JR

[Arthur Morris]

Feel like it might benefit from a pano crop keeping the clouds above and below of the geese in the right frame of the image... Like the color palette in the image. JR

Agree. Funny, I remember attaching the reposted image now appearing in Pane # 10, but apparently it never uploaded :)